In December 2011 we were happy to introduce a new app GreenCloud Printer, released as a beta, we have been updating it for the last months, and now we have a very reliable application.

The purpose of GreenCloud Printer is to optimize your existing printer by installing a virtual driver. Instead of printing directly from your text processing, browser, or PDF reader, you can use the GreenCloud dialog to change and optimize your ink usage in 1 click.
If you are a cost-saving hunter, the ink is the most expensive part of printing (whether if it is at home or the office), but on sustainability point of view, saving paper is very eco-friendly, it reduces waste. It also just reduces the frustration to be printing unwanted pages.

We are proud to say our software has been actively used by more than 88 000 users ! who have printed more than 4.4 million pages with our software. We avoided to print at least 282 000 pages (A4 or letter format) and this makes about 1 ton and 400 kgs of pure paper! We feel very happy to see people using the app to also have the relevant data to see how much and where have we helped to save the planet.

It’s not a lot yet, but it is a very good start, that’s why we need you NOW. If you haven’t tried the product, download GreenCloud, there is a free personal home version. If you have used it, whether you liked it or not, please post a few words on our Facebook page to help us to make it better.

If you are working in an association, corporation, university, or education with a lot of users and computers, know that we are opened to discuss a site license as we want to complete our reference list. Just contact us!

Share this post on your Facebook timeline, please comment and support us, it takes just a few seconds, but it can make a difference.

If you don’t share, we are going to kill this baby squirrel! … hmm… what we mean is that we are killing forests and he will be homeless!

GreenCloud printer is the latest ObviousIdea’s app, and we are proud of it. The green pdf software is available to download since the end of December. Therefore, we have at least one full month ( january 2012 ) to make a first list of the statistic data.

GreenCloud printer usage In January 2012 :
‘k’ means you need to multiply by 1000 to get the exact total.

116k pages printed. In average, the printed document has 2,7 pages
15k pages not printed
2k pages sent by email
8k users ran the software 1 time
5,6k users used the software several times in the month.

91% of print jobs are really printed to a physical printer
7% of print jobs are saved as PDF format.

59% of sessions are 1-page-only job, but it represents only 24% of the volume of total paper printed.

The documents of more than 10 pages represents 28% of pages

11% only of sessions are forced in Black&White
10% of sessions use the n-up ( print several pages side by side on the same face of the sheet papers )

Despite nearly 60% of printers reports to be able to do 2-side printing, only 6% of people select this option.

General Data conversion ( things you need to know to convert the data into more “real world” unit)

It’s only the first month, but there is already interesting trends. Some options aren’t used a lot ( 2-side, B&W ) despite it is activable in 1 click in the main screen. It means some ergonomic maniac could find some tips to improve this over the time and the next version. The software hasnt been heavely promoted yet, and hasn’t yet promoted by French organization such as ADEME

GreenCloud Printer is our new product, it’s a eco-friendly driver for your printer. It works with all the printers of the market, and you can save paper, ink, and trees by previewing with always the same dialog your printing job.

it’s also a PDF creating tool to replace your existing solution. You can choose in 1 click each page you need to print or not, but it also detects automatically the page with no contents (like when you print a web page, or an email and don’t need the footer and ads following the real content)

but it’s not finished ! it is also a cloud uploader, so you could send directly your new doc to Google Docs, Dropbox, Minus.com or by email using the internal PDF virtual driver.

it’s a new software, so we need feedback to improve it. you can download and check the video of GreenCloud printer